A Deep Look at Sony’s PlayStation 4

The following is an excerpt from a report compiled by Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities.

After the market close on Wednesday, Sony officially unveiled its next console, PlayStation 4 (or “PS4”), at an event in New York City. Sony will launch the new console during the holiday 2013 season, although pricing remains unknown.

As expected, Sony provided significant detail about the specifications and power of its next console in a presentation that we found impressive. The PS4 will feature a Blu-ray disc drive, as did its predecessor. Its architecture is similar to that of a supercharged PC, and will include an X86 central processing unit (“CPU”), an enhanced PC graphics processing unit (“GPU”), eight gigabytes (“GB”) of unified memory, and a local storage hard disk drive (“HDD”). As a result, conversion of titles from PC should be easier for developers, and it appears that Sony (NYSE:SNE) is intent upon inducing developers to develop multiplatform titles with the PS4 as the lead SKU.

The PS4’s accelerated processing unit (“APU”) will have eight CPU cores. System memory will be graphic double data rate (“GDDR”) 5, a high-performance dynamic random-access memory (“DRAM”) graphics memory card for high bandwidth computer applications capable of producing over one million movable objects. The polygon count of models will increase to over 30,000 polygons from 20,000 in 2012, 15,000 in 2010, 1,500 in 2005, and 350 in 1999. In addition, the PS4 will have a secondary custom chip for background processing, reducing load times and giving the gamer the ability to instantly suspend and resume gameplay. It will also have dedicated always-on video compression and decompression hardware for social functionality that allows the seamless uploading of gameplay video.

The PS4 will have a new controller, the DualShock 4, that will feature a tighter sense of control, with better rumble capability and less latency. The controller includes a Touchpad, a headphone jack, and a “share” button for better social integration. A light bar sold separately will be used for recognition purposes…